Surrender The Heart

“Yes, I have been kissed before.” Clumsy kisses, she thought, or bland ones or simply dull ones. Before she knew it, her gaze had drifted down to Chris’s mouth. His kiss would be—Oh, God, if his mouth had created such delicious sensations when he had touched it to her palm, what would it feel like if he kissed her?

Suddenly aware of the direction of her thoughts, her cheeks flamed, but she did not avert her gaze, not even when she saw the knowledge in his eyes.

“Go ahead, Ariane.” Slowly he pushed away from the balustrade again and took a step forward and then another. “Go ahead and satisfy your curiosity.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Liar.” He took another step toward her. “Kiss me. Don’t say you don’t want to.”

“No.” That one small word seemed to cost her all her breath.

“Afraid?”

“Cautious.”

“One could think that you believe me a wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Ariane gave Chris a long, slow look before she shook her head. “No. I don’t think you would ever bother disguising yourself with sheep’s clothing.” Giving in, she grinned. “At best you’re a wolf wearing a scrap of some poor sheep’s pelt who was too imprudent or too slow getting away.”

He laughed. “You have a wicked tongue, Ariane.”

One association led to another and his laughter died as he imagined taking her mouth, twining his tongue around hers, tasting it, feeling her passion come to life.

The heat in his eyes was so intense that Ariane would have sworn that she felt it on her skin. “So I’ve been told.” Her voice had grown softer and softer until she had only mouthed the last word.

They stared at each other, breath uneven, pulses racing.

“So where do we go from here, Ariane?” Chris asked when he was certain he could speak without babbling like a fool.

“I don’t know.” Her teeth worried her lower lip. “I still need help—yours or someone else’s.”

“Mine,” he said quickly, not recognizing the sharp emotion that sliced through him as jealousy.

“Yours,” Ariane agreed. With him, at least, she would know just where she stood.

“Even though I’m the big, bad wolf.” A corner of his mouth lifted.

“But I’m not Little Red Riding Hood.” She smiled, regaining her confidence now that she had seen that this time he had been as moved as she. Surely this had been only a random moment where they had unwittingly gotten under each other’s skin. “Nor one of those imprudent sheep.”

“And the other?” he pressed.

His gaze was so serious, so intense that she felt the dangerous breath lessness return. It occurred to her that perhaps the moment had not been such a random one after all, but she pushed the thought away, unwilling to believe it.

“And here I thought you were a gambler, Ariane. A risk taker,” Chris goaded, the urgent beat of his heart at odds with his flippant words. “A chance,” he said softly. “That’s all I’m asking for.” His voice lowered, grew huskier. “Surely you would not deny a man a chance.”

Ariane’s head made one more attempt to remind her that she was a reasonable person who had never made a decision without carefully weighing both sides of an issue. A sensible person who had never taken a risk that could not be calculated. But now her heart was pounding so madly, so loudly that she heard nothing else.

“All right, Monsieur Blanchard. A bargain. You play the suitor and in return I shall give you a chance.” She lifted her small hand against his triumphant smile. “But not a chance to seduce me. That is just a prettier word for the strong forcing their will on the weak.”

“Then just what is it that you are offering me?”

She took a deep breath and ignored the feeling that she was making a terrible mistake.

“I am offering you the chance to persuade me that a taste of that pleasure you guaranteed personally is an experience not to be missed.”

Because the flare of excitement was strong, he wanted to reach for her, touch her. Because it was too strong, he did not. He had never been a man to be ruled by desire, but for the first time in his life he understood the true temptation of a woman.

“That sounds fair enough.”

“How good of you to think so, Monsieur Blanchard.”

When she held out her hand to him, not languidly as women present their hand to be bowed over or kissed, but thrust straight out like a man’s, Chris’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“Is the custom of sealing a bargain with a handshake unknown in California?” she demanded, feeling foolish with her hand thrust out in front of her.

“Of course not” Belatedly, he took her hand in a firm grip. “Forgive me. I have never made a bargain with a lady before.” He grinned wickedly. “At least not a bargain like this one.”

“Monsieur—”

Chris shook his head. “Why don’t we put Monsieur Blanchard to rest? Or don’t you think that we are well enough acquainted for you to call me by my given name?”

“I don’t think—”

“Say it.” Suddenly it was important to him to hear her say his name. Not merely important, but crucial, as if that would, in some odd way, turn a bargain made half in jest into a promise. At the moment it eluded him why he should find promises so desirable, when he had always assiduously avoided them.

Still holding her hand, he took a step and then another until they stood so close together that his body pushed her crinoline back so that her skirt billowed behind her. So close that he could feel the light, tempting press of her body against his.

“Say my name, Ariane.”

She should be frightened, Ariane thought. He was so tall, so broad that her world was suddenly completely circumscribed by his body, whose power was not disguised by his elegant evening clothes. His fingers circled her hand so relentlessly that she might have been manacled to him. But it was his eyes where the true danger loomed—his eyes, so intent that they seemed to consume her.

“Christopher,” she whispered obediently, spellbound by those cool green eyes that held more heat than a thousand fires.

“Chris,” he corrected.

She smiled. “That suits you better.”

“So?”

“Christopher belongs in a stuffy drawing room. Chris belongs among mountains and deserts and beautiful, empty valleys.”

Chris chuckled at the precision of her observation. “Is that a polite way of saying that I don’t belong here?”

“It’s not an insult when I say that. On the contrary.” She smiled ruefully. “I don’t particularly belong here myself.”

“It depends on how you define ‘here.’” Slowly he loosened his grip on her hand and placed it palm down against his chest. Then, using thumb and forefinger, he tipped her face upward. “You belong here perfectly.” He lifted his other hand to lie against the nape of her neck. “Perfectly.”

He remained very still, his touch so light that they both knew all Ariane had to do was step away.

But she did not step away. She had been waiting for this moment, she realized, ever since she had seen him in the theater.

“Now we will seal our bargain my way.”

Despite the command in his voice, Chris lowered his head slowly. Then he touched his mouth to hers.

Not wanting to frighten her and knowing well just how much a little control could intensify pleasure, he reined in the impulse to take her mouth fully. Instead he tasted his way along her lower lip, adding only an occasional flicker of his tongue.

Even when her lips parted beneath the light pressure of his, he did not take the invitation. Instead he continued to tantalize, to tease, allowing himself no more than a brief foray to taste her.

Ariane felt heat blossom within her. It poured through her veins until she was suffused with it. Until she was light-headed with it. And still he did not kiss her, but continued to brush her mouth with his as if he was interested in no more than a casual game.

Her hand was still lying on his chest just over his heart and when her fingertips picked up his quickening heartbeat, she knew that the same heat that curled through her like a living, breathing entity had taken possession of him as well. But he continued with the maddening game, even as his heart began to pound heavily against her fingers.

She opened her eyes to find him watching her. How could he be so controlled, she thought, when she could feel the drumming of his heart? How could he be so controlled when she was melting with the need to taste him?

Lifting her other hand, she threaded it in his hair. She felt the leap of his heart and the answering thud of her own.

“Now,” she whispered against his mouth.

The tug of her fingers on his hair and her breathy invitation had his control crumbling like a house of cards. As he took her mouth fully, he heard a sound that he only vaguely realized came from his own throat. Now that he had surrendered, he plunged into the kiss like a man on the brink of starvation.

For a moment Ariane went still as he invaded her mouth. Voracious, his tongue explored and probed. Unbearably aroused, even more by the sensation of being wanted so badly than by the kiss itself, she moaned.

Her moan pierced his consciousness, which had been clouded by his passion. Oh, God, he thought as he pulled back. He had fallen on her like a wild animal. When she moaned again, his eyes flew open.

As he looked down at her, her eyelids rose to reveal eyes dark and unfocused with arousal. Ridiculously grateful that he had not frightened her, he lowered his mouth to hers again.

She waited for the passion to blaze again, but she found that everything had changed. The fire and flash of a moment ago were gone and in their place was a steady, bright flame. Where he had plundered, he caressed. Where he had demanded before, he offered. Where he had taken before, he gave.

Minutes passed that seemed like hours as they feasted on each other, breaking away only because their breath had become as ragged as if they had run for miles.

As Chris lifted his head, the stunned look in his eyes matched hers. He had not expected such hunger, such need. Nor had he expected a pleasure so sweet, so sharp.

They stared at each other, trying to come to terms with their feelings. If they heard the opening and closing of the door, neither one gave a sign. Even when the indignant voice sounded, they moved apart slowly, choppily, like windup dolls whose mechanisms had begun to run down.

“Monsieur!” The voice sounded again.

Only then did Ariane recognize her father’s voice.

Chapter Six

As Ariane turned around to face her father, the warmth and pleasure that were drifting through her began to fade. With something resembling panic she struggled to hold on to these sensations that she had never experienced before.

“Monsieur, unhand my daughter.” Pierre de Val-mont’s voice quivered.

Ariane saw the telltale glazing of his eyes that preceded one of his rages. “Papa. please—” Moving forward, she stretched her hand out to him. She was not afraid of his rage, but she was afraid of ruining the last of the pleasure that was still drifting through her like the echo of a lovely melody. “Please.”

His daughter’s plea penetrated that place inside his head that sometimes seemed to take over. Her voice was soft and submissive as it should be. He focused his eyes on her face and the fear he saw there soothed him.

“You will come with me now.” He strode toward her and held out his arm.

Ariane obeyed him, grateful for the support of his arm and hating herself for needing it.

“You will stay away from my daughter, monsieur,” he said. “Stay away.”

When they reached the ballroom door, Ariane stopped and turned to look over her shoulder.

Chris was standing there as she had left him—his hands by his sides, his eyes still stunned. Perhaps, she thought, the odds were not against her after all.

Ariane took a deep breath the moment they were seated in their carriage. There was no sense in prolonging it, she thought. If he was going to fly into a rage, he would do it whether they were in a carriage or in their apartments.

“Papa—” she began.

He interrupted her. “Your conduct was inexcusable, Ariane. You made a spectacle of yourself.” He leaned forward. “But that isn’t the worst of it”.

“What do you mean?” She flinched back from the smell of alcohol on his breath.

“Do you know who this man is?”

She shook her head and lifted her shoulders in a shrug. “I know as much as you do.”

“What?” he screamed. “You know?”

“Pierre, chéri—” Marguerite de Valmont’s hands fluttered ineffectually. “Please.” She touched her husband’s arm, but he shoved her roughly into the corner of the carriage. Softly, she began to cry.

“What are you talking about, papa?” Ariane demanded loudly, knowing that it was important that she keep her father’s attention focused on her. “Know what?”

“That he’s a bastard,” Valmont shouted. “He’s Charles de Blanchard’s bastard.”

Ariane stared uncomprehendingly at her father for a moment before she made the connection.

“The Charles de Blanc hard who was married to Cousin Odile?”

“Yes. Don’t you understand?” He gestured with his fist. “He left her for another woman and this man is their child.”

He was still glaring at her, but she saw that the unreasoning rage had passed.

“But, papa,” she said, “that was at least thirty years ago.”

“So?” he growled. “Odile still remembers very well that she and her children were abandoned. And we cannot afford to insult her. She will be invaluable in introducing us to the right people.”

“Papa—”

He silenced her with a gesture. “All that aside, someone of his parentage would not be a suitable husband.”

“Papa—”

“The discussion is over, Ariane.” Valmont subsided against the cushions of the carriage and, forgetting his daughter’s presence, tugged his wife out of the corner where she was still sniffling and put his arm around her shoulders.

Ariane watched her mother smile tremulously and go into her husband’s arms with no hesitation, his roughness of a few moments before already forgotten.

Her stomach twisting, she looked away. She would never allow herself to love a man, she thought. Never.

Chris swore under his breath as he nicked his chin. Reaching blindly for the soapstone to stop the small trickle of blood, he managed to send a glass tumbling into the washbowl. The sound of breaking glass had him swearing again. Damnation, he seemed to have two left hands today—both apparently equipped with five thumbs.

Sam, who after twenty years was more companion than servant, looked up from brushing a suit, his thick black eyebrows raised in surprise.

Chris met Sam’s gaze in the mirror and suppressed the urge to growl. He was in a foul, edgy mood after a restless night full of dreams. Shadowy dreams that he could barely remember and explicit dreams that even now had his body stirring.

She was crowding him. Not a moment seemed to go by that he did not find himself remembering something about her. Her lovely face. The texture of her skin. The look in her extraordinary eyes when she had suggested her outrageous bargain. And then there was the taste of her mouth.

Suddenly he snapped back to reality and found Sam’s fingers circling his wrist.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“Your eyes got all dreamy like. Wouldn’t want you to cut up that pretty face of yours.” Sam grinned. “Why don’t you let me finish doin’ that?”

Chris frowned, but did not protest as Sam took the razor.

“You sure did a lot of dreamin’ last night,” Sam said conversationally, bending his knees to accommodate the difference in their height. “Lot of talkin’, too.”

Chris slanted a look up at Sam, a glimmer of humor entering his eyes for the first time that day. “Are you trying to tell me something, Sam, or ask me something?”

“Both, I guess.” Sam grinned again. “You took to speakin’ Frenchie half ways through the night.” Adroitly he scraped away the last of Chris’s beard. “She must be somethin’, this Areeann, huh?”

“Something,” Chris agreed, deciding that this was possibly more apt than any description of Ariane he had come up with.

“Some female company’ll do you good.” Sam pronounced sagely. “Maybe you’ll sleep better at night.”

“And then again maybe not.” Chris thought of the odd bargain he had made with Ariane. Somehow he did not think that it would allow him to sleep better anytime soon. Not unless he got very lucky. And if by chance he did, he would definitely not be spending his nights sleeping.

He frowned at his reflection in the mirror. What the hell was Ariane de Valmont doing in his dreams anyway?

Why was he dreaming again now? He’d kept dreams at bay for so long. He shivered. Even now, twenty years later, he shivered at the memory of the nightmares that had begun as his mother had lain dying.

But he had fought them, he reminded himself just a little desperately. Fought and obliterated them. He’d freed himself from all the fears, all the emotions. Now he didn’t need anyone anymore and he was determined to keep it that way.

Chris placed his card on the silver salver offered by the majordomo. While the majordomo strode off, another liveried footman showed him into a small salon. The room was elegantly furnished, but its empty feeling led to the assumption that it had no other purpose than to function as a kind of waiting room for visitors.

Minutes passed—five, ten, fifteen. Although Chris had spent most of his life in places where niceties like engraved cards and gloved servants and silver salvers were the exception, he understood the rules of society well enough. And he understood that the Marquise de Blan-chard was keeping him waiting in order to humiliate him.

He remembered a room much like this one. He’d sat there, expectant and excited as he waited with his father for his aunt, Leontine, to receive them. Then he’d sat there alone, fighting angry tears, after his aunt had had him removed from her presence. The old memories tugged at him, but he pushed them away. He was no longer a small boy who could be hurt by petty meannesses, he told himself. He was a man who had made something of his life.

With every appearance of equanimity, he extracted some papers, as well as a small notebook and pencil, from the inside pocket of his navy blue frock coat and began to make notes for the business meetings that he had scheduled in the coming days.

Almost half an hour had passed when yet another footman came to tell him that the marquise would see him now. Chris gathered up his papers without hurry, drawing a disapproving glance from the servant, and followed, the man.

The drawing room was overheated, overstuffed with excessively fussy rococo furniture and smothered in heavy velvet drapes, whose only saving grace was their brilliant azure color. The sweet, heavy scent of patchouli lay over the room like a pall. Chris remembered his father’s simple tastes and decided that it was no wonder that he had fled.

The Marquise de Blanchard sat on a fragile, gilt armchair as if it were a throne, the passionate hatred in her eyes belying the arrogant coolness of her features. A short, jowly man stood behind her, his hand curved on the back of the chair, his dark coloring and the embonpoint that strained his waistcoat making it obvious that he owed his appearance only to his mother.

“I thought I made it quite clear last night that I wanted nothing to do with you,” the marquise began without preamble, not even bothering to wait until the footman had closed the door behind him.

“Your effrontery in calling on me is quite staggering.” She paused. “Almost as great as your effrontery in daring to use the Blanchard name.” Contemptuously she tipped her plump chin toward the salver where his card lay.

“I regret to disappoint you, but although my birth was not sanctioned by marriage, my father adopted me. It is all quite legal. As for calling on you, it would not have been my choice to do so, madame la marquise,” Chris said, lifting one broad shoulder in a lazy shrug. “It was, however, your choice whether you choose to receive me or not”.

“You should have him thrown out on his ear, ma-man.” The lines of ill-temper around Maurice de Blanchard’s mouth deepened. “You have absolutely no reason to acknowledge him like this.”

“Do I assume correctly that this is my half brother?”

Maurice straightened as if he had been prodded with a hot poker.

“What excruciatingly bad taste to even mention that we are—that we could be related,” he corrected quickly. “But what can one expect from a man raised among savages?”

“An interesting concept.” Chris’s mouth curved in a derisive smile. “It could be worthwhile to debate which one of us was raised among savages.” Ignoring the marquise’s outraged gasp, he continued. “As far as the question of our being related is concerned, perhaps you should ask—” his cool gaze flickered briefly to the marquise “—madame votre mére if we are.”

Although she understood his implication perfectly, it was that transient look that the marquise found truly insulting. Jumping up, she advanced toward him.

“I will not endure your vulgarities any longer, monsieur.” She waved at him with a heavily beringed hand. “State your business and decamp.”

“I am here at my father’s request.”

The marquise gave a snort of a laugh. “The wretch probably wants to mend his fences, as he did after his—” her small mouth curled “—mistress died.”

Chris stiffened. “I beg to correct you. After my mother’s death, my father wanted to mend his fences with his sister. Only with his sister.”

“And whom does he want to mend fences with this time?” She laughed.

“I must disappoint you, madame la marquise,” Chris said softly. “My father died four months ago.” Grief welled up within him to clog his throat, but he kept his expression tightly controlled. This he would not share with them.

“Charles is dead?”

Chris fell absurdly touched by her stricken whisper. Words of condolence rose to his lips, but before he could speak, he saw the look in her small, black eyes sharpen.

“You said you were here at his request. Did he leave—”

“Was there a—” Maurice stepped from behind the chair.

“No.” Chris looked from the marquise to her son. Neither one showed even a perfunctory sign of grief. He could have forgiven them that, he thought After all, his father had wronged them both. But he could not forgive the gleam of cupidity in their eyes.

“That is no more than was to be expected,” the marquise snapped. “He probably didn’t have a franc to his name.” Feeling the unsteadiness of her hands, she linked them tightly to stop the hateful trembling. That one moment of hope could redeem a lifetime of humiliation tinged her next words with an extra dose of acid.

“What are you doing here then?” she demanded. “Making a collection so that you can have masses said for his black soul?”

Chris tamped down the anger that rose within him—anger not for himself, but for the gentle man who had been his father. Yes, he had had his faults. Yes, he had committed his sins. But surely he had not deserved this crude vindictiveness.

“If my father did not have a franc to his name, then it was only because he signed all his property over to me when his health began to fail,” he said, keeping his voice neutral with some effort.

Suddenly the acute instincts that had enabled him to hold his own and better in a hundred rough-and-tumble card games had him lifting his head like a wild animal scenting danger. The tension in the room had changed, intensified. There was more than simple greed here, he thought. There was the smell of a card player down to his last chips who had drawn a poor hand. There was the smell of desperation.